You don't need to have evil motives for wanting to fake your identity or go incognito online; for many people, it's a matter of privacy and avoiding spammers and scammers. Thankfully, there are a great many tools for staying anonymous online. Here are a few of the best.

The Browser's Incognito Mode

The private browsing mode in Google Chrome, Firefox, and other browsers records no information about your browsing, including form data you enter, files you download, or history of pages you visit. It's handy for many things beyond porn. To launch a window in private browsing mode, use these keyboard shortcuts:

Firefox: Sick of having to start a completely new session (and get rid of your old one) just for…
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Beyond Private Browsing: How to Clean Everything

Even with private browsing mode, traces of your browsing session still stays behind on your computer, however, such as DNS lookups and Flash cookies. Here's how to get rid of those sorts of bits and really browse without leaving a trace.

Proxy Servers and VPNs

Although private browsing mode is great for preventing sites from writing trackable cookies and other info to your computer, it doesn't completely make you anonymous. If you want the most assurance that others won't know who you really are, you'll want to use a proxy server and/or a virtual private network connection so you can appear to be someone and somewhere else.

The free Tor software is one of our favorites for anonymizing our online sessions. It routes web requests through multiple tunnels, preventing sites from knowing who or where you are.

If you want to set up your own secure secure, encrypted system to access on the go, you can do this usingHamachi and Privoxy, tunneling traffic using your own home computer.

Web site Sharpmail let's you send anonymous email and SMS messages to any recipient.
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Fake Identity Creators

Trying to stay anonymous can be difficult with all the forms websites require you to fill out. You can make up fake information yourself or, better yet, use something like previously mentionedFake Name Generator to create a realistic fake ID that'll fool web forms.

So you've decided you want to drop off the map and leave Big Brother behind. It's harder…
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Lifehacker's Evil Week is all about topics such as password cracking, social hacking and other questionable tricks to make sure you're in the know. Knowledge is power, and whether you use that power for good or evil is in your hands.

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